


Unspeakables

by Turnpike



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Slytherin Harry, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:51:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4789592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turnpike/pseuds/Turnpike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Sirius' release from Azkaban, he gains custody of a godson who is very different than he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I would really like to be Patrick Rothfuss.
> 
> For those of you who have read my writing before... yes, I'm still working on Unbecoming, and it remains my primary focus. This, I guess, is Unbecoming's twin... a story I began at the same time as Unbecoming. Like most of the stories I start, I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

In the middle of London, there is a cul-de-sac of 19th century townhouses, and in the middle of these townhouses is the entrance to our story. It opens with the door to number 13 Grimmauld Place, and a woman stepping inside the dim foyer. The entrance is cluttered with sounds, unsettling, quiet sounds--a woman's rasping breath and the whirring of tiny chitinous wings--but the woman knows her way. She places her feet deftly as a ballerina amongst the debris of this bachelor apartment, and walks in.

A man was sitting at an ancient desk in the back room, whose dusty windows left the room nearly as dark as the windowless entry hall. To compensate, he'd lit an old oil lamp to illuminate the parchment he was currently poring over while squinting through scratched old lunettes.

The woman cleared her throat. The man jumped, spilling the ink at his elbow as he drew his wand and pivoted, flinging the chair behind him. And though he recognized her immediately, it was several more moments before he relaxed.

"Andy," he breathed, face flush from embarassment. "Never, ever, do that again. Haven't you heard of knocking, woman?"

The woman herself had recovered from Sirius' aborted attack, and was now brushing dust off of the seat of the ottoman. 

"Well, you're the one who said 'Make yourself at home'."

"Yeah, and do you normally sneak up on Ted at home?"

Andy had now resorted to trying to beat dust out of the ottoman. "Yes," she answered smugly. "But normally he likes surprises."

Sirius laughed and leaned back in his chair, pulling off his glasses as he did so. "Well, anytime you want to surprise me like that--owww!"

Andy smirked and blew a little smoke from her wandtip, a la American shooter. She'd given up on the ottoman and resigned herself to sitting primly on its edge. "What's that you're saying?"

"Geez," muttered Sirius, "girl can't take a compliment nowadays."

"Oh, I can take a compliment--so long as you can take a hex." Obsessively, she swiped at the ottoman cushions again, and more dust billowed up. "Sirius, when are you planning on cleaning this place?"

Sirius blinked. Then...

"What exactly do you think I've been doing for the past month?" 

"Well, I know you've been busy sorting out all the Black accounts and all the legal documentation since you got out of prison, changing your will, meeting with mediwizards, dealing with your sudden swing in popularity," Andy smiled, a little sadly. "But don't you think you need to spend some time making this place... fit for human habitation? Especially with Harry living here now?"

"Woman," Sirius began, "I get home at six from all the crazy appointments, and I spend from six to ten cleaning the bloody house. And then it begins again at six the next morning. If it weren't for Harry--" he shook his head. "Kid's more responsible than he has any right to be. If I hadn't told him pointblank to keep out of most of the rooms in the house--God knows what's in here--he'd probably have cleaned them out already. Always has breakfast and supper ready. Heck, he gets up before I do." He scratched behind his ear. "Kinda makes me worried."

"If you're that worried, you can swap me Harry for Nymphadora. The girl's graduated her auror program and is still living at home and expecting me to do her laundry, while complaining every odd minute about curfew."

Sirius brightened. "Getting Harry to meet Dora might not be a bad idea. Might help him loosen up a little." His voice softened, and he glanced upwards towards the bare boards of the ceiling. "Frankly, I'm worried."

"Oh Sirius..."

"It's been a month, Andy. He's not talking, not opening up to me at all--I've had more meaningful conversations with perfect strangers in an hour than with him this whole month!"

Andy choked. "And how many of those 'perfect strangers' were fully dressed?"

Sirius' face remained implacable. "This is serious--"

Of course it's you, Andy thought, but something in his tone made her forego the pun.

"--he spends all his time cleaning or studying, and when I try to talk to him, he either just listens or gives me polite answers. He doesn't seem to have any interest in going out and having fun. He just sits up there and writes in those bloody notebooks of his."

"Sounds like the perfect teenager," Andy drawled.

"He hasn't even asked about Remus," Sirius pressed desperately. "Andy, Remus has been in the hospital for the past month--they're saying that it's going to be at least another couple of weeks before they'll feel comfortable letting him out. He's going to be crippled up pretty badly now, on top of being a werewolf--and Harry doesn't even seem to care enough to visit him!"

"Harry almost got killed," Andy stressed, leaning forwards. "Sirius, I know you want them to get along, and I know Remus is a good man--but that doesn't change the fact that once a month, he changes into a homicidal monster."

"I never expected him to act so prejudiced--"

"Is it prejudice or common sense to avoid something that can harm you?" Andy shook her head. "Not all of us are animagi and can afford to be so blasé about spending time near a werewolf. Even if Lupin is harmless now, Harry's probably still spooked from nearly getting his throat torn out --and if he's as studious as you claim, he'll have spent the last month reading up on all the werewolves who aren't so harmless outside of the full moon."

"Harry just about killed him too though! You'd think he'd be--I don't know--a bit disturbed about that? Maybe want to apologize?"

"Maybe Harry just has a different way of coping with things, and no, I don't think he owes Remus an apology--" Andy caught Sirius' look, "Unless you're not telling me something?"

Sirius stared off into space, with that dead eyed look he got when was remembering Azkaban. "That night, when I grabbed Peter, and Harry and the Weasley boy came after us--well, after I'd explained myself to him and given him back his wand--"

He swallowed.

"He refused to let me and Remus kill Wormtail. Instead, he drew his wand on Peter. Peter was begging him for mercy, blubbering on his robe hems, kissing his boots--and Harry's face just twisted, and he kicked him off, and grabbed his arm, and said something.

"I don't know what it was, but I think it must have hurt Wormtail's mark, because he started screaming and crying and scratching at the mark until it was bloody, and the mark was burnt black as under Voldemort's hand, and Harry slashed his wand forward until Wormtail crumpled back on himself like a broken doll."

"Tell me that's not more or less what you had in mind when you found Wormtail," Andy said quietly. She might be married to a muggle-born, but she was born and bred Black. She understood revenge. "Tell me that you wouldn't have cruciated him."

Sirius blanched. "No. Never. I mean, I'd thought about it, and okay, I might have, but not in front of kids."

"If you would have done it, then why is it wrong for Harry?"

"Because he's a kid!"

"Yet all of your complaints have been about how little of a kid he is," Andy regarded him evenly. "He's thirteen. The same age Bella was when she killed her first muggle."

"He's not Bella," snapped Sirius.

"No, he's not. Bella never had a reason to be angry. He does."

Sirius stared at her in confusion. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Andy levelled her dark gaze at him. "I visited Remus, and I saw what was done to him. The burns."

"Yes."

"And I also know that it could have been way worse."

"How in Merlin's name could Harry have done anything worse than using that spell?"

"He didn't outright kill Remus. He held him off until Snape could get there. It's not his fault the school didn't tell the students that fire just pisses werewolves off."

Sirius grunted.

"Listen, I know you're disappointed, but it's not fair to Harry," Andy whispered. "He's not supposed to be James, Sirius."

"Yeah, I think I'd've noticed that by now," he grumbled. "But he's not supposed to be a dark wizard either."

The listener above the room took his ear from the floor, and got up. 

He'd heard enough.

In contrast to the study below, the room he occupied was polished down to the bare bones of the floorboards, and pale light filtered through the window that overlooked the barren garden in the back. There were no surprises here. In the month of his residence, he had opened the great chest and beat the great moths out of Regulus' old school robes, chased the dust bunnies squealing out from under the bed and into the fireplace, and aired out the ancient linens. He'd opened the endless closet--for this room had belonged to a Black great-grandmother and her oversized wardrobe before Regulus had inherited it--and petrified the doxies therein, before delicately piercing each heart with a needle and hanging them to dry in the cellar. He'd washed and whitewashed the walls and set the portraits sneezing with his dusting, and finally, he'd set up his own study below the large bay window.

If Sirius noticed the aftermath of his work, the man was far too busy to pay attention to its details, which suited him fine, for Sirius had no sense of privacy. The first morning of summer vacation, the man thrown open the door without a word of warning, and tried to wrestle him out of bed. 

If it had been reflex for him to scorch his assailant, it had been considerably more work for his assailant to heal the injury. 

The man wouldn't let up though, and he didn't know whether to take this as a sign of wayward devotion or stupidity. Any polite requests to have his privacy respected were acknowledged and discarded with equal congeniality. 

In the beginning, he'd arranged his room as it had been at the group home. The desk sat below the large bay window as a matter of convenience, since the windowseat where he read his books was always moving up and down and he needed to climb up on the desk to reach it. The three tier bookshelf sat to the left of his desk, organized with his school books, and his current interests lay open on the incongruously messy desk. The closet was shut, since he didn't have enough clothes to put there anyways, though he had begun to wear Regulus' old robes when Sirius wasn't around to heckle or reminisce, and the great chest had become his own.

This changed soon as Sirius entered his room uninvited for yet another heart to heart chat. He'd taken one glance out of pretended interest at his equations, and freaked. 

"Harry--do you even know what this does?" the man demanded, as though hoping he didn't know the answer--half pleading, half furious.

Yes, he thought belligerently, it rips the fluid from an animal's lungs-- or a man's lungs --so it can be used to resuscitate infants born breathless. It could save lives, but I doubt you've ever even studied physiology, much less heard of pulmonary surfactant--

Or, he mused idly, staring at the red-faced man, alternating between his harangue on the dangers of dark magic and how he understood Harry's anger at the world, or it could be used to rip your lungs out your nose. 

In the end, he'd tried to explain muggle science to a somewhat dubious Sirius, but his studies that drew from obscurer sources had been charmed unnoticeable, and then hidden by Kreacher as his maddening guardian showed an uncanny skill for finding them anyways. He'd begged Sirius to teach him, but the man had always deferred on account that he was too busy--which sounded to Harry as though the man didn't quite trust him.

In the end, his unlikely ally had been the old house-elf. 

Kreacher had initially treated Harry with a wary regard rather than his customary incivility, no doubt following the lead of Walburga Black's portrait. The portrait itself was a confused and imperfect copy of the old woman's confused mind, but it retained Walburga's strongest opinions and preferences, and chief among these was her fixation on blood purity, and alongside that, the sense that Sirius had been corrupted by those 'filthy half-breeds' who shared his company.

And while Harry himself was 'the filthy halfblooded son of a blood-traitor', the portrait had gleaned from the infrequent visitors to the house that he was responsible for maiming one of the scum that had corrupted her boy in the first place. Moreover, he was quiet and inobtrusive as any wellbred child, and, according to Phineas, who very rarely grew bored enough to slip over to her portrait, inclined to study the arcane arts.

This neutral stance had been shifted one night after Sirius had invited his dubious acquaintances over to discuss old times. 

Harry had crept down the stairs to listen in on the meeting, only to find that nothing more interesting had occurred than the whole of some 'Order' getting drunk on what Kreacher muttered to be the last of his Mistress' vintage wines. He'd meant to go back upstairs, but the door had opened suddenly, and a foul-smelling man shambled out from it. 

He hid behind the door as the man glanced shiftily from side to side before closing it behind him, and held his breath. The man began to stalk upstairs, and Harry, after a pause, scrambled up silently after him. He tried the door of a room on the second floor, a room Sirius kept under wards, and tapped a crooked wand to the knob. It clicked open.

From within, Harry could hear the jingling of chain and clanking of metal, and the creak of cabinets opening. He stuck his head around the door.

The man was stuffing his bloody trenchcoat full of Sirius' things--silver candlesticks and brass trinkets and oddments Harry had probably seen once in Knockturn. He'd opened a cabinet, and grabbed for a large silver locket, and Harry couldn't help himself.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The man didn't pause, didn't even turn to glance, as he shoved the locket into his coat. "'Snot as though any of this lot is helping anyone, is it--someone might as well sell it, and I doubt Sirius cares--"

Harry had stepped forward and glared up at him up at him with all the force a 13 year old boy can muster--which is enough to make a man laugh. But Mundungus was a poor excuse for a man.

"I care," Harry snapped. "I care, and I have cause to care, seeing as I'm his ward, and heir, and given that my grandmother came from this house, it's my family's stuff you're sneaking into that coat. Hand it back."

The thief held up his hands. "I was just looking at that one thing--honestly, I didn't take anything else--"

"Liar," Harry snapped. He felt for his wand in his pocket and wondered if cursing this man could possibly worsen Sirius' opinion of his mental state. "Give it back."

"I didn't--" he continued to protest, but the light of bulbous yellow eyes peering from the doorway had caught Harry's attention. 

"Kreacher, this filth," he snarled the word, "has been stealing our family's possessions. Take them back."

The withered elf perked up. "Kreacher has Master Harry's permission?" 

The prospect seemed to transform the creature. In the pale light, he thought he saw the shadows of talons creeping from the nubby, cracked nails, and the gleam of fangs amongst the broken teeth. There was a sense of expectation here, as though the house itself was holding its breath with Harry in anticipation. The long pointed ears of the elf turned back like a dog's as he crept down, poised to attack. 

"You don't need to--"

"Apparently I do." He stepped aside. "Kreacher, you have my permission."

The house-elf lunged and the man dodged, but not quickly enough. Faster than Harry would have believed possible, faster than a werewolf, the elf struck at the man with magic and claws and teeth. The man scrabbled for his wand under his robes, but the elf tore it free and sent it spinning into the corners of the room, his claws shredding leather and skin like paper. Candlesticks and keepsakes clanged around his feet, more than Harry thought possible, as the elf's magic ripped the charms and seams from his endless pockets. The man howled, and through the screams and his own satisfaction, Harry heard the sound of footsteps trampling up the stairs.

The lights flashed on, reducing Kreacher to the fragile creature Harry was used to seeing. He blinked at the brightness.

"What the hell is going on here?" Sirius demanded. 

"This man is stealing your family heirlooms!"

Sirius stared at Harry, as if he wasn't believing what he was hearing. The thief was rolling on the floor, and Sirius and the woman with him rushed to him, while Kreacher hastened to pick up the debris of stolen treasure and put it away. 

"Mundungus," Sirius murmured, looking at the long scratches under the ragged clothing, the floorboards sighing below the man as they drank the blood beading down from his raked sides. "Are you okay?"

Harry honestly felt this was probably a good time to get out of here, but had stayed, mostly curious as to what would happen.

"Do I look okay?" The man coughed weakly, and made feeble motions to get up, looking as pathetic as though he were mortally wounded, while the pretty plump witch at his side made sympathetic noises. Disgusting. "That crazy, senile house elf of yours attacked me for no reason." He hacked again, and blood and snot dripped from his nose, which wiped messily on his sleeve. "Need to be butchered like all the others--wants its head up on the wall--"

"Kreacher," Sirius snapped. The elf froze from where he'd been slipping some necklaces back into the cabinet, and peered back at Sirius. "Master?"

Sirius flung a curse at the elf, sending him hurtling into a wall, as Harry winced. "How dare you attack a wizard? You snivelling little cutthroat, I should have sent you packing the minute I entered this house. He sent another curse towards the elf, and the elf groaned in pain--though Harry, having seen his godfather perform the same curse on Pettigrew some months earlier, knew a man would scream under it. "You little backstabber--and here I thought a house-elf--not even one as vile as you--could go after a guest--"

"They can't," interrupted the woman, quietly, from tending to Mundungus' wounds. She glanced at Harry significantly. "Someone has to give them permission."

Sirius blanched, and turned to Harry as though he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Harry," he whispered, and then glanced back at the witch and Mundungus. "Outside," he said brusquely, grabbing his shoulder and marching him to his bedroom. 

Once inside, he slammed the door shut and turned to him, face with white with some emotion Harry could not identify.

"Harry," Sirius said, voice deathly quiet. "Do you have any idea what you nearly did tonight?"

Harry sat on his bed, feeling oddly anaesthesized, not at all sure what he should be feeling. 

"He's a thief," muttered Harry.

"He's a man," Sirius stressed. "A man you just about killed tonight--Harry," Sirius turned to him, face aghast. "Do you realize that? A house-elf, given permission to attack a wizard--especially in the house-elf's home, and even more so in a house of this age--is nearly always lethal! Let alone an elf with as vicious a temperament as Kreacher!" 

He'd begun to pace. "Do you realize why we keep house-elves--why we basically enslaved an entire species?" 

Harry didn't answer. 

"They're deadly territorial! They slaughtered entire tribes in days before reckoning, just for wandering into their lands! They slashed open the stomachs of pregnant women and let them bleed, or ate the children from out their bellies. Men used to chop their heads off and spike them around encampments as a warning--before we bound them. And you--"  
He stared. "You let loose a demon on him."

Harry still didn't answer.

"Look at me."

Harry looked up.

Sirius ran his hands through the hair near his temples. "I don't know what's gotten into you. I don't know why you would do this." He sounded helpless, but then recovered himself. "But never, ever, ever set a house-elf on a man again."

"Okay."

"If it wasn't unsafe to let that gossiping elf out the house, I'd give him clothes. As it is, I should kill him."

"Don't," Harry told him, quietly, and Sirius looked back at him in incredulity.

"What?"

"It was my fault," Harry murmured. "I was just so mad about Mundungus taking your stuff--I thought you'd actually care about him stealing our family heirlooms--and I had no idea a house-elf was that dangerous--"

Sirius eyed him uneasily, but for now, it seemed the man might believe him. "Harry--"

"Please don't get rid of him. He's really helpful for cleaning and finding things in the library."

"We could get a new house-elf," murmured Sirius. "One less crazy."

"But he's crazy powerful too. You know what's after me. He's like an extra effective protection."

"Only because he's compelled to be, but I can see your point." Sirius stroked his goatée, and glanced sidelong at Harry. "Okay. I'll keep him--but I'll be giving him strict orders not to attack anyone unless someone's life or wellbeing is in danger. And Mundungus will be taking home those heirlooms in compensation for what happened this evening.

Harry scowled at that--behind Sirius' back.

"And Harry--" Sirius told him, "you really need to learn exactly how dangerous our world is, or else one of these times you're going to use a spell blindly and someone--and hopefully not you--is going to pay the price for it."

There had been further words--words that fell off him like rain from a tin roof. But afterwards, when Sirius had retreated back downstairs, when the noise of Mundungus' cursing and the woman's soothing words had quieted some rooms over, and Harry had turned off the lights, there was a small pop.

Harry rolled over in bed, slowly, and opened his eyes to meet Kreacher's, lantern-bright in the moonshine.

Slowly, as to seem unthreatening, the old house-elf brought the covers up to Harry's chin, and smoothed the duvet.

"Kreacher thanks Master Harry," his voice cracked. "Master Harry almost prevented Kreacher from failing, but no, Kreacher failed to protect Mistress Black's things--bad Kreacher, bad, bad Kreacher!" He banged his head against the doorpost, weeping, until Harry grabbed the sobbing elf by the ears. "And wretched Master Sirius, giving all Mistress' goods to his filthy friends--"

"Not all of them." Harry dug into his pillowcase, and withdrew the locket, that spun and twinkled by the moonlight through the window. "He won't be having this one."

"Master Harry saved Master Regulus' locket!" The elf grabbed for the locket, though Harry held it back, suddenly reluctant.

"You failed in keeping it safe once," he reminded Kreacher, who visibly drooped. "I cannot think Master Regulus would entrust it to your care a second time. I'll be keeping it safe from now on," he promised the crestfallen elf, who suddenly brightened, kissing Harry's fingers and making him feel distinctly uncomfortable. "Master Harry is a good, good boy, a kind boy, Master Harry is deserving, unlike filthy Master Sirius--"

"Okay, okay," Harry agreed. "Now, why don't you go to sleep? And no banging your head against the wall--you're no good to anyone if you give yourself a concussion. If you must punish yourself, punish yourself by cleaning up that parlor tomorrow."

"Master Harry is just and sensible as he is kind!" exclaimed Kreacher, disappearing in a pop.

And since then, Kreacher had belonged to Harry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: My name is not J.K. Rowling.

"So the beginning point for the animagus transformation," Sirius began awkwardly, as Harry continued to stare off into nothingness.

"Yes?" the boy prompted, perfunctorily.

"You need to know what you're turning into. Gives you some direction. Most people going it independently use their patronus--course, patronae aren't always the person's animagus form."

Get to the point, Harry urged him silently. He'd read the bloody notes already. 

"So I'm going to change you into your animagus, just to give you a sense of what it feels like. It might be uncomfortable though--and we might want to do this outside," Sirius mused, considering the limited dimensions of Harry's room. "Just in case."

Personally, Harry thought there was a very low chance of him morphing into an animagus large enough to collapse the floors or break through the walls, but it was probably wise to support Sirius if he was making any attempts at prudence. He trailed after him down the worn stairs and made a mental note to order wood varnish, and out the back door.

Harry braced himself, standing on the grey-green grass.

"Umm, you might want to get on your hands and knees. In case you have four legs, you know. Standing up is a great way to land on your ass."

Adjusting himself, Harry waited.

"Good. Now--" and Sirius murmured the incantation under his breath and spun the mahogany wand in a slow circle.

Nothing happened. 

And then everything was wrong.

Abruptly Harry felt the nightmare stretch of his jaws, the break and curve of his bones, the burn of his coccyx splitting into new vertebrae. He breathed in deeply, and then found he couldn't breathe for a moment before he choked in breath. His hands clawed and shrank beneath him, colours went monochromatic, and suddenly he smelling meat the man before him, mouth-watering and savoury, and he advanced a step. The man was making noise.

"Ah shit," Sirius muttered. "Harry? It's me--"

He lowered his body, crouching low to the ground, lips curled back, leaping, as the thing before him abruptly spun into a blur of black fur. A rival stood before him. He snarled.

The black mongrel wagged his tail tentatively, and he paused. The mongrel whined hopefully, and made the mistake of stepping to nose him too quickly.

He whirled, snapping his jaws along the mongrel's side, hugging front legs around the rival's neck. His rival was heavier though, more experienced, and threw him off, but he knew these grounds better than the other. He spun and nipped at the rival's leg, and backed off a few feet, growling, taunting him to follow. 

The other was strangely apathetic though. 

He barked, mockingly, and the stranger remained unmoved.

Time to change tactics.

He drove in close, moving to hamstring the bloody mutt, when the other abruptly realized his intentions and ran off. He lunged after him, lighter and faster. The fool mutt seemed to anticipate his every move though, and refused to be driven. Faster, faster he moved, until the old dog was breathing hard, and then--

He dropped dead, over by the pond. The old mutt sat down farther away, panting hard, and then looked in his direction. He kept his eyes half lidded.

Slowly, the mutt advanced and withdrew, circling and sniffing. When he was finally nearly at his throat, he whirled upwards and locked his jaws around its throat, pulling him sideways through the pond. The mongrel growled and swung him off, and he allowed himself to fall onto the bank.

The damage had been done.

The waters writhed, and the coiling black eels sawed through the water. The mongrel keened, and leapt onto the bank, but it had tangled its length around its legs and tore at its fur. His rival yelped, and he relaxed, lapping at his wounds as he watched, wondering if he could tear the body loose from the eels when they were done--

"What the--Afflixio hydrus!" came a voice, and with it, a scent he hated, oh hated to the roots of his bones--

But the eels had withdrawn and his rival came forth from the water snarling. He'd deal with him later. Now, the second rival had to be dealt with, the strong thing with the self-smell, that stood on two legs with a long stick in one hand and a short stick in the other. He leapt for its throat, but the thing grabbed him with a strength disproportionate to its puny frame and slung him into the iron railing, and his head rang like a gong.

"Averto hominem," the second rival snapped, and before his vision went black, he heard him yelling. "Sirius? What the hell were you thinking?"

************************************************************************

He awoke in darkness to the taste of blood in his mouth, and the sick-sweet scent of it in his nose.

He moved to swing himself down from the bed he was resting on--and found he could not move an inch. His limbs were stretched out and chained to his bedposts, and on struggling, he felt the bite of metal manacles into his wrists. He bared his teeth in displeasure, vowing to tear the throat of whomever had entrapped him here, when he heard the voices from below.

"I can't believe you... completely irresponsible..."

"Remus," Sirius protested, "I couldn't have known he'd be a magical animagus. They only come around once every hundred years. And he can't make a patronus--how else were we going to find out his form?"

"I don't know--maybe by actually doing the work?" Remus snarled, his nails curling into the wood of the antique ottoman as he gripped the armrest. "But no, instead you risk his life and his sanity--"

"It wasn't a risk!" Sirius insisted. 

"Listen. You know as well as I do that wizards above a certain power threshold almost have to have a magical animagus form--they'd burn out the body of any lesser creature."

Sirius raked his hand back through his hair. "But that's wizards like Dumbledore," he began weakly.

"Yeah. Exactly. Like Dumbledore."

"But James never--"

Remus snapped his jaw, and you could hear the clacking of his teeth from upstairs. "James. Sirius, when are you going to realize..."

"I know. I know, okay?"

Remus regarded him skeptically.

"I know! But I really didn't realize he'd be a werewolf--I thought he'd be a panther, or something, well, less homicidal!"

Remus groaned deep in his throat, a sound that verged on a growl, and reminded himself that his friend may have suffered significant mental deterioration in Azkaban. 

"And how the hell is his totem animal a werewolf? I mean, no offence, but he hated weres even before he met you--"

Remus stared baldly at him.

"Right," Sirius stopped. "Oh hell, I really did bollockse this up, didn't I?"

Remus paused. "Regular animagi keep their minds--or at least, you don't seem to be any more retarded now than before you spent eleven years as a dog."

Sirius was not too far gone in guilt to make a face at this.

"A magical animagus though? From the moment of transformation, they lose their minds, and without external intervention, they don't have long to recover them. Those who had experiment with the magic often find themselves unable to change back. Rumour has it that the Headmaster's familiar is itself an old lover of the Headmaster's unable to revert to his own form. And those who can change back--He's going to change, Sirius. Whether physically or mentally, it's going to happen. You heard about the unicorn girl, the one that Muggle wrote about? They said she hung herself with her own hair, because she couldn't stand her own impurity."

"Yeah, well, Harry's no unicorn," murmured Sirius, a snicker at the edge of his lips.

"Yeah? Well, you know Jack the Ripper? That was from a single transformation into his vampiric form and back."

Sirius folded over, and the humour left his face like the soul from a victim of the Kiss.

"You manage it though. Being a werewolf, I mean."

Remus regarded him. "I manage being a human most of the time, and a wolf during the full moon. We don't even know if Harry will be affected by the lunar cycle. He became a wolf in broad daylight. We can't know if he's going to have a completely human mind all the time, or even if he's contagious."

Sirius blanched.

"We need to have him see a healer."

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"Remus, think about it. The papers are already on about how dangerous he is since that accident with the Muggleborn girl first year, and you know how they discriminate against wolves. Giving them this is asking for trouble. And I've only just got him back--plenty of people thought I couldn't take him, that I was too mentally unstable after Azkaban--"

Remus snorted.

"Yeah, maybe they had a point," Sirius muttered bitterly. "Still. They'll take him away. I'll probably be fighting another conviction for something like reckless endangerment, and they'll find out I'm unregistered. I've barely just gotten on my feet, and he's barely settled in."

Remus regarded him steadily, with a resolve he often lacked.

"You're being selfish," he told him.

Sirius looked surprised. 

"You're being selfish," he repeated. "He's a kid, which is exactly why we have to get help here. You're not a healer. I agree we can't go public with this, but we have to at least ask Dumbledore, maybe Snape for help--"

"Snape?!" Sirius repeated, aghast.

"Snape," Remus responded with surety. "He hates werewolves as much as Harry, so he'll be good moral support."

"That's the most twisted thing you've ever--"

"And if there's anything that can ease him through this, he'll know it. He's a genius, Sirius. Dumbledore might pull Pomfrey along too."

"The more the merrier," Sirius muttered, getting up.

"Where are you going?" Remus demanded.

"To check on Harry. If we're going to bring in the bloody circus, I want to let him know first."

Remus grimaced at the sound of chains jangling from above, a snarl, and the faint scent of aggression.

"Yeah. Good luck with that."

The creak of the stairs, and with a start, he realized he could smell Sirius, and the foul stench of the werewolf farther in the hall.

He ignored them.

"Harry, I know you're awake. I'm sorry--"

He snarled, and heard the rival step back before pausing. Presumeably the dog man had grabbed the other to prevent a retreat. Typical.

"Harry," the dog-man remonstrated, turning on the gaslights with a waved hand. "Remus saved my life out there. He didn't know what he was doing a month ago--no more than you did yesterday."

I knew exactly what I was doing. 

I was eliminating you.

************************************************************************

When Dumbledore closed the door on the boy's groans some hours later, it was with a grave face. Sirius, who had been staring anxiously into the space below the landing, turned to him. "Is he going to be okay?"

The frown on the old man's face grew deeper. "Sirius, I think it best we sit down for this conversation." Without meeting his eyes, Dumbledore galumphed down the stairs with a speed that belied his age and swept into the parlor, while Sirius' questions rattled through the rafters.

"The transformation--he changed back! It isn't permanent, is it? I mean, it's not really like he's a magical animagus--a werewolf isn't actually an animal. It doesn't make sense. You can't be one and not be it--"

The parlour was already occupied by Severus, nursing a glass of whisky, and Remus, who abstained from alcohol as a matter of course, and was staring golden-eyed into the fireplace.  
Albus claimed the seat next to Severus on the ancient ottoman, and eyed the decanter on the table.

"Severus, if I may...?"

"It's vintage Black," he sneered. "Be my guest." He knocked back his glass and poured one for Dumbledore, before refilling his own. To Sirius' alarm, the old Headmaster himself took a sizable swig of the drink before leaning back and fixing him with tired eyes.

"Sirius." He paused, and Sirius thumbed the old wood of the chair he'd taken next to Remus, opposite the headmaster, and waited for it.

"When I learnt you boys had become animagi without supervision, I was alarmed. I've failed many times over the years as Headmaster, to recognize my students' exploits, to guard them against their own ambitions--but this could have been a fatal oversight." He removed his spectacles, stared down at them bleary-eyed, before cleaning them on his silk robes. "It may well yet be."

"I knew there were dangers--"

"Really, Black? Because your actions clearly demonstrate--"

"Severus," Albus quieted him with a look, before turning back to Sirius. "I am afraid, Sirius, that I may have to agree with Severus in this regard. I do not think you fully understood the dangers, then or now.

"The decision to become an animagus is a serious undertaking, the least reason being the difficulty of attaining the transformation. If you had studied the manuals on transformation, in earnest, you would understand the physical transformation is only the most superficial part of becoming an animagus."

"I know that it's supposed to be difficult to isolate the mind of the animal from your own," Sirius said dully. "None of ever had trouble with it. Not even Peter."

"Sirius. You were taught occlumency as a child, were you not."

The man nodded slowly. "All the purebloods."

"You began with an organized mind. I have never entered Harry's mind before now. I cannot ascertain how much of the damage predates this. But there was no central structure to his mind." The headmaster took another sip of his whiskey, and set it down. "Frankly, I've never seen anything like it, at least, not outside of textbooks."

"But it can be fixed," Sirius pressed.

"I cannot say for certain. We are in uncharted territory." Dumbledore looked down into his glass. "I could have transformed into a phoenix animagus. Easily. And yet, I never have, Sirius. The more powerful the wizard, the more perfect the transformation. No one can say the exact threshold of raw ability where even attempting a transformation risks irreversible change. We only realize it when the line has been crossed."

"But James was powerful!"

"As are you." Sirius began to feel uncomfortable under that pointed gaze.

"But it's never been irreversible."

"Has it not?" The Headmaster adjusted his glasses up his nose. "You are not a dog right now, Sirius, and I am glad of it. But your eyes are reflecting the gaslights."

Sirius blinked in startlement, blinked until his eyes were human once more, ignoring Snape's lip curled in disdain.

"There are more subtle changes that an unskilled animagus might experience. Intense sensation. Impulsive behaviour. An altered personality. It affects the body on a very basic level. Some of these changes may well be positive. The child of an animagus is likely to themselves be gifted with transformation, or to have a particular affinity with animals similar to their parent's form. They claim Slytherin himself was a snake animagus, and because of this, many of his descendents are blessed as Parselmouths.

"The results are as likely to be detrimental as positive though. I knew a woman with a moth animagus form. Her children seemed normal, and we were all very relieved, until the eldest child grew into a woman. She was very beautiful then--more so than any woman I have seen then or since--but she could neither eat nor drink. She lived three days on pure magic, enchanting every man who laid eyes on her, and fell dead as stone on the third morning.

"It was a lucky thing, that this particular family kept their corpses in a Mauseleum and strictly observed the rites of the dead, because it was months later, when her corpse had rotted in its sepulchre, that they heard the scratching in the tomb. Upon opening it, they found an infant, no larger than a chicken's egg, scrabbling through her mother's dead bowels for air. That child lived to see her own daughter's birth, but it was only through potions and dark arts, and I pray that the third generation will escape the curse."

"Deer are mammals," Sirius said slowly. "The incompatibility shouldn't have been enough to cause any damage beyond the animagus himself."

"No, and now we must consider what would have," Dumbledore began, looking at Remus.

"Werewolves can't affect animagi."

"Werewolves can't affect animals," Dumbledore corrected. "But as you've argued before, you are not an animal, are you?" He rotated the tumbler in his hands. "Truth be told, there have been no studies to date on animagi interacting with werewolves, given that animagi and voluntary interactions with weres during the full moon are so unlikely to begin with. When Remus entered the school, however, I discussed with him the restrictions of his condition. You will remember, Remus."

"No kissing," murmured Remus. "No duelling, physical fighting, Quidditch. I carried a bag of silver dust in my pockets all the time, just in case I got a cut and bled on something."

"Yes. And yet," Dumbledore set the tumbler on the table, and folded his fingers, "you bit your friends as animagi."

"He would have torn himself apart otherwise!" Sirius cut in.

"I do not mean to denigrate your reasons for doing so. It was a very brave act to help your friend. But now, we must take up the consequences. You, and Peter Pettigrew, are carriers of lycanthropy. It will not affect you. In all likelihood, it is probably linked to the animagus transformation, and will not affect others unless there was a transfer of fluids while you were transformed, or if they were to attempt transformation themselves."

"But hardly anyone ever becomes an animagus!" Sirius protested. "There's almost no chance it could ever hurt anyone!"

"It already has, Black," snapped Snape. "Or has your godson's condition escaped your addled senses?"

"Severus," Albus stressed, and Snape nodded his head curtly, folding himself back in his chair like an injured mantis. "Sirius, Remus, however unlikely the risk is of this hurting anyone else, the consequences are too great for anyone to be uninformed. I will need a list of anyone with whom you, James, or Peter were involved--anyone in contact with your blood. Anyone you kissed."

"It will be a lengthy list," Severus muttered.

"You will need to confer with Poppy and Severus. They've agreed to check your blood and saliva for tracers of werewolf magic. Poppy will be instructing you, in particular, with regards to ensuring no one else is contaminated."

"Contaminated?"

"I do not like to use a word that has become so tangled up in blood politics, but there is no other medically appropriate one," Dumbledore told him tiredly. "Ron Weasley. Hestia Jones. They, and everyone else you have come into contact with is at risk. We must mitigate the risk of future consequences while dealing with those in the present." 

"Is Harry going to be alright?"

"And now, we come full circle," murmured Snape.

"We don't know."

 

************************************************************************

The minutes or hours or seconds--it was all the same to him--bled together, and his memory ran like water through a tempera landscape. Time was fluid as shape, as sound. He felt the change rippling through him with the certainty of the tides, and abruptly, agonizingly ripped back, his body twisted beneath their wands. He fought it, forced their magic back until he was formless, neither wolf nor human, an irrecognizable mass of nerves and energy.

At these times, the white wizard came and set his body back into the clumsy shape of the freakish kine. He snarled pathetically behind his blunt teeth and tore into himself with his flat nails, until they fixed his hands and ankles tight to the bedframe, and he lay unmoving, panting and frantic. The stench of his own piss and sweat, whatever could not be spelled away, became almost a comfort against the foreign smell of the rival wolf. It sidled against him and spoke softly in the voice of the two-foots, and he responded in their own voice, warped in this throat, threatening the feeble thing with blood and hunger as soon as he tore out his binds.

They were always there, the kine. They stared at him, one after another in turn, for hours at a time. They hung crystal pendants about his bedside that burned like sunlight until he pushed with a kind of lunatic rage and they shattered into rainbows. They wired open his jaw and poured smoking poison down his throat, that left him dazed and slow-witted for hours. Failing this, they laid lengths of silver down his body, that left long burns until he retreated into his man-mind, and fired up again as soon as he tried to change back.

He strained to catch their flesh in his jaws and hated them with all the frustrated passion of a chained wolf.

*********************************************************************

"How is he?" Remus asked, almost unwilling to hear the answer.

Sirius swallowed, and regarded those present. "No change. The silver and wolfsbane combined keeps him sedated, but he's not human. I look at him and it's like I'm seeing a wild animal."

"One would think you accustomed to the sight after so many years," Snape murmured, with a look at Remus.

"Back off, Snape," Sirius muttered, though he was too tired for indignation at the moment. He ran a hand over his unshaved jaw. "No, Remus, even you seemed... lucid... when you're shifted. He's like the wild packs from the first war, worse even. Professor Dumbledore, is there anything..." 

Dumbledore regarded him from where he stood before the fire. "I do not know. In all my years, I have heard of those locked into their animagus forms, but never voluntarily."

"Are you saying he wants this?" Sirius demanded from his seat at the table.

"I am saying that he is fighting for the wolf, rather than the man. We can continue torturing the wolf until he recedes into his human-self out of exhaustion, but as long as he wants to be a wolf, he will continue reverting as soon as he is healed."

"Well, we can't just give up--"

"Indeed, Sirius," Dumbledore gave him an uneasy smile, slipping into the chair closest the fire with a creak of his bones. "But to continue now may require measures whose cost we cannot predict."

"I'll pay it," Sirius said immediately.

Dumbledore smiled again, more sadly. "Except it is not yours to pay." He turned his gaze to Snape, who looked at him with revulsion.

"No."

"Snape, please," pleaded Sirius. "Anything."

Snape's lips curled. "The great Sirius Black, begging for my help--" he caught the Headmaster's look of displeasure, and lapsed back into courteous distaste. "Headmaster. A private word." He gave a pointed glance at the door, and at the headmaster's nod, Sirius and Remus reluctantly left, the door ajar behind them.

Snape whipped it shut with a flick of his wand, a pale blue anti-eavesdropping spell limning the threshold a moment later.

"I'm willing to do anything, Headmaster," Snape continued. "But I can't guarantee there won't be damage."

The old wizard looked more ancient and shrunken than ever, and they both knew what was being unsaid here. Snape had been the Dark Lord's interrogator as well as his Potions Master. He knew how to warp a mind, could do so even more effectively here, where he could use his legilimency without the risk of discovery. He knew the Imperius. He knew how to break a will and reassemble it without protest.

But he also knew the boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and reviews!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I still don't own the Harry Potter franchise? Pity.
> 
> Warnings: Violence.
> 
> //: writing

Severus stepped into the room at noon. It would be more effective to do this the day of the new moon, when this lunacy would be at its ebb and the mind of the man would be awake, but given the past few days, they all hoped they could resolve this issue before the full moon. Waiting was not an option.

He was no longer struggling. If he'd had time to interpret the boy's expression, he'd almost have said it looked as though he was listening for something, or someone, far off in the distance. But he had no time.

The eyes staring at him now were bloodshot and golden-green, and he opportunistically fixed that predator's gaze with one of his own before muttering the incantation.

"Legilimens."

The boy gave no more resistance than an animal. He felt the brief disorientation as he spun into the other's mind, but the submarine sound of alien thoughts was absent. There was scent, blooming in effervescent trails in the darkness, blind lights in the hollow sky of the boy's skull. Were he occupying his own mind and body, even this bare apprehension of them would not have been possible. Right now, he was borrowing the boy's senses, measuring them against his own darkness, until he smelt smoke, and burning, and fear-sweat, and a woman—no, a girl—screaming.

This. He needed the fear of the boy, not the fear of the animal. 

This memory, as little as he knew about it, was a pressure-point of the boy’s identity. He touched it, and their minds came alive with pain. A thousand images skidded into his mind, a year compressed into an instant, it would take him as much time to even begin to process them--

“HERMIONE.”

The name reverberated between their thoughts. The name, made terrible by regret, seared itself into his mind.

Granger, he thought incredulously. He’d known it, they’d all known it and seen it, but that was different, after all, from seeing it from the inside. Granger.

They’d both been quiet first years. The boy, quietly contemptuous of his peers’ prejudice, accepting their overtures of friendship with the minimum of engagement. The girl, unusually serious for a Ravenclaw—at least, he assumed, once her enthusiasm had been dulled by her classmates’ irritation.

He knew now it had not been dulled, merely redirected. 

Love. It was sincere and childish adoration that overwhelmed each memory, would have inspired Severus to ridicule, if only because it reminded him so much of what he’d once felt for the boy’s mother. Love…

He pushed further, pulled them into the epicentre of that pain--

He saw stars behind his eyes, and behind that, the black of unconsciousness. 

He pushed anyways.

The memory swallowed them whole—

Too late, he realized—it was more than a memory—

\------------------------------------------

He ran, faster than when the gang boys were after him, faster than when he’d run amok of a cop for lifting candy bars from the grocer’s, faster than he’d ever run in his life. Faster than humanly possible, faster still. He tripped on an uneven edge in the slate floor of the dungeons, caught himself in the next stride, his toe stubbed, didn’t think to stop because it hurt. He ran as wolves run in the starving winter, purposeful and tireless and unfeeling, skidded a corner, ducked into an abandoned classroom that Severus knew had once been staff quarters. 

The hinges of the closet door were broken, so it was permanently only half-way open, but someone had broken down the bottom half of the rotting wood door. He squirrelled his way through the hole, heedless of splinters, felt in the dark for the lid of the trapdoor.

It opened by itself, and he felt the swell of fear and shame and horror in Potter as it did so, and wondered why.

The boy didn’t pause though, not as he, or any other of his Slytherins might have. He crawled to the hole, ignored the rotting tines of the ladder, leapt the twelve feet down to the floor.

Here, there was a room—one of many rooms, abandoned at some point in the distant past because of flooding, and forgotten when the waters receded. There was a room, lambent with wandlight, and a cozy nest of forgotten furniture and neglected tapestries and library discards. It was neat and homey and put the occasional love-shacks made by his upper years to shame, and as curious as it was in its own right, Severus’ attention wasn’t on it, because Potter’s focus was squarely on the occupant of the chamber.

She was sitting on a pile of pillows, an ancient wool blanket hailing from the infantry of the Grindelwald war over her lap and shoulders, a journal resting on her thighs. She was beautiful as she’d always been to Potter, her thick brown hair obscuring her face, her fine white hands toying with her lit wand.

There was an alien stillness to her now though, and when she moved, an acuity of purpose that seized him with terror.

She spoke, and her voice was not her own.

“I am alive. Just as you asked.”

“Get out of her,” Potter said brokenly.

“What’s the matter, Harry?” the thing in Granger’s body asked, in a horrible parody of her voice. “Don’t you care about me anymore?”

“I care about you, Tom! But I care about her too, she’s alive, you can’t just kill her and take her body—“

“Can’t I?” laughed the thing. “But you like the Mudblood so much! You can have us both this way—my mind, in her body. Wouldn’t you prefer it that way?”

A sick realization shuddered through Harry. “That’s not what I want—not at all. I won’t like you any better, Tom, for her being gone. I like you both for who you are, for your minds, you can’t just erase hers—“

“But I haven’t,” the thing said slyly, lifting her head, so that he could see the Granger girl’s eyes had gone stark red. “She’s right here, in the diary. Given how much time she spends in books, I thought I she’d enjoy permanent accommodations.”

“I trusted you,” Harry said furiously, walking past him to scoop up the diary, pull a ballpoint from his pocket. “You said you wanted to meet her so you could teach her—“

“Teach her?” it smiled guilelessly. “Oh, but I have taught her, a valuable lesson—though there might be no coming back from it. Not to trust strangers, and more importantly,” it bared its teeth, “not to take what belongs to me.”

Harry was half-listening, writing furiously into the book.

/Hermione? Hermione? Are you hurt?/

Severus watched in fascination as the ink pooled and bled into the page, was spat out, reformed.

/Harry? Tom said he was going to show me something, I think something’s gone wrong, he’s not talking, and it’s so dark, please, get me out, I’m scared—/

Harry’s fear gave way to anger. He put down the book, carefully. 

“I don’t belong to you,” Harry crossed his arms. “Now, GET OUT OF HER.”

“No?” the thing came up to the boy, gave him a measuring look that had nothing of a child in it. Her hand--its hand-- picked up his jaw firmly, while he resisted in silence. “I told you, didn’t I? We are the same, you and I—both orphans, abandoned, both clever and powerful. You belong to me, in the way I belong to myself.” It paused, considering, let his jaw drop from its hand. “It’s less a matter of possession than identity.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t care, just get out of her. Now. If you ever want to talk to me again, you’ll get out of her!”

She was still writing, he saw, from the corner of his eye. He turned to watch as Tom did.

/Please!!!!! Help me! Harry, I’ll do anything—/

“She’ll do anything,” the thing said, playing with his wand. “What will you do?”

Harry slung his fist at the creature’s head, ducked the first freezing hex that it fired, tangled his legs with it—and froze, as he was seized with pure power. He could and did break the hex windlessly a moment later—but not before he was bound.

“Now, Harry,” the creature tut-tutted. “Is that any way to treat your Mudblood’s body?”

Harry spat. 

It wiped the spittle from his cheek with a look displeasure. “Muggle tactics,” it opined drily. “I would hope that you’d become more cultured under my tutelage, but it appears this will take some time.” It paused. “Of course, time is the one thing we will have no shortage of.”

It moved to Harry’s level, fixed him in the eyes.

“So, Harry,” it whispered, in the girl’s voice. “You will do… anything, if I get out of her?”

No, thought Severus, there was no way he could agree to anything that open-ended, he had more sense than that, no matter how much he cared for the girl—

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Anything. Just get out of her. What do you want?”

The creature laughed, brushed its hair back from its scarlet eyes, and locked its gaze with Potter’s.

“Only what I already have, of course.” Its smile was all teeth. “Now, don’t resist me, child. Transverso animum!”

Potter screamed. The creature screamed. Distantly, Severus could hear himself screaming too.

Legilimency within legilimency, memories within memories, his mind couldn’t handle such a density of information, and still, it did. Another lifetime, crammed into the boy’s mind and his mind, a house on fire and the stench of burning polyester, adrenaline high of dark magic, his body shaking from the rush of it, and pain now, the pain of tearing his whole self apart—

\--we will meet again—

\--and the pain of recoupling, the pain of a presence he’d thought long dead as the Dark Mark burnt anew, just as he was cast out of Potter’s mind so quickly he was thrown across the room. He clutched his branded forearm to his chest as the boy came upright in bed, fully present for the first time in weeks, and fixed him with a gaze that, if human, was too old and knowing for a thirteen-year-old.

“Traitor,” he said mildly.

\-----------

Everything hurt.

The chemical burns left by silver along his torso, muscles strained from fighting against his bonds. Wrist, ankle, collar—the skin was raw and bloody beneath his bonds. Bruises, from where he’d hurt himself flailing, from where they’d restrained him. An aching jaw, from when they’d wired it open, to force Wolfsbane down his throat—before he’d snapped the restraint?

The pain of Severus’—the Professor’s—traumatic legilimency superseded all of these. His head was throbbing, worse than when he’d gotten knocked around by the older boys at the home, worse than when he’d accepted Tom into himself. Pain enough that he should have blacked out.

Except he didn’t.

It was there, and he knew it, but it was distant. There was a sense of separation, as though the pain were happening to someone else. The same sense of distance, in fact, as when he had experienced Tom’s memories—

He expected to feel uneasy at this recognition. He didn’t. That, in itself, was a strangeness.

There was another pain in the room, even more remote than his own, a burning. He glanced up to see Severus clutching his left arm to his chest. A rebuke fell from his lips without forethought.

“Traitor,” he said mildly, and froze.

What in the nine circles of hell—

a fury of images ground themselves through his skull: Severus bowing, Severus receiving his Mark, Severus reporting the location of his Mudblood mother—

He shoved at them ferociously, imagined them forced back into a chest and the chest slammed and a wall built high about the chest, and even this bothered him—it was the most crude legilimency possible—

A thousand more facts and memories tore through his mind, and he shoved at them too, shoved it all back, harder, harder. It was wasn’t staying put, he couldn’t think, he felt on the verge of insanity. It occurred to him that Severus, traitor that he was, was a Legilimens, and he had loyalty to Lily Potter’s son, if not the Dark Lord, he might help—

“Come here,” he gasped desperately, clumsily tugging at the Mark. Too hard. Severus rocked back against the wall at the force of it, before stepping forward. Relief for the Mark was only to be had under the Dark Lord’s hand. The man tentatively placed his pallid arm under Harry’s bloody hands.

“Legilimency,” Harry hissed. “Help me rebuild the walls.”

Snape looked deep into his eyes. He felt the man probe the shallows of his consciousness and recede, before shaking his head.

“I cannot,” he said faintly. “The wolf spirit your damned godfather unleashed in you is still there, but quiescent. Whatever has caused these memories to break loose, they are the only thing standing between you and becoming a beast. I am sorry,” he swallowed, “my Lord.”

He hissed, flung his mind forward into Snape’s as artlessly as any beginner. The man allowed it, allowed him to see the memories of himself, flailing and writhing, his body bunching into muscle and fur and wretched proportions. He exited, the natural pressure of inhabiting a foreign consciousness pushing him out easily. 

Weak. He was weak, and unpractised—

He shut down that train of thought as quickly as he had the last.

“Okay,” he said, in a voice that seemed more familiar to him. “Okay. Release me from my bonds, then. And help me to a shower.” 

The state of his body, and the rankness of the room, should have been secondary to the pain. Now that he noticed them though, they annoyed him on some level deep as memory.

“Yes, my Lord,” Severus murmured. The man removed a silver key from his neck, and set to opening the locks on Harry’s bonds. Harry flinched, instinctively, as the man approached with the key. Mercifully, the man did not comment. He peeled the bloody cuffs and collar from him as gently as they could, but they still broke the scabs and bled afresh. The man fetched a dressing robe from the closet and swathed him in, pulling Harry’s arm over his shoulder as he stumbled. 

Harry grimaced. He’d been in bed for longer than he’d reckoned. His legs and arms were limp as spaghetti, the way limbs looked when they’d been removed from a cast, and he wavered against Severus’ hold. The man opened the door, to find Sirius Black and Dumbledore outside it.

He was feeling too much, too much, all at once.

“Harry! How are you? You’re up, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry—“

He shut his eyes against the noise the man was making.

“Sirius, I believe Severus has things in hand. We shouldn’t overwhelm Harry so soon—“

“I’m his godfather though! I’m sure he’d much rather have me taking care of him than Snape here—and Snape, you probably have other things to do. Right?” he challenged.

Harry didn’t need to open his eyes. Snape was sweeping them down the corridor, past Sirius, past Dumbledore. 

“Sadly, Black, I do not have better things to do. Harry’s health is my priority. I’m sorry if our interests diverge in this.”

Sirius was snapping back a comment, but Dumbledore was blocking him. The headmaster might as well make himself useful for once, he supposed. 

He spent a long time in the shower. 

The water ran brown with dried blood.

He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to feel. If only he could just dissolve, drain himself away as easily as the dirty water spilling off his skin.

Severus knocked though, eventually, tentatively. Reluctantly, he turned off the water, flung on the fluffy bathrobe that materialized without his noticing. Kreacher, of course.

He emerged, swaying, and Severus rushed to him. 

“My Lord—“

“It’s Harry,” he retorted, leaning on the man’s arm, and then, again, more quietly, “just Harry.”

\-----------------

He slept a long time, while Snape and Sirius and Lupin bickered downstairs, with the Headmaster presiding. It was dark when he awoke. Unwilling to go downstairs and chance having to talk with any of them, he had Kreacher bring his supper. The elf blubbered in gratitude at his wellbeing.

He liked Kreacher. It was little wonder all the purebloods were such egotists if they all had servants whose happiness was so dependent on their pleasure. The house-elf was the best thing he’d acquired since entered the Wizarding World—

\--he shook his head violently at the thought.

Acquired. Thing. Did he really view Kreacher as a possession?

And if he did, why should it even matter?

That was the problem of having Tom in his head, he thought, staring out the window at the Muggles haplessly fornicating in the alleyway below. He couldn’t know if his thoughts were his own, if he was thinking these things because he genuinely believed them, or because Tom did. If his crude occlumency in blocking Tom’s memories had really been an instinctive action of his own, or if Tom had done it to prevent damage to his host.

If nothing else, he supposed, his concern over the morality of his actions was a fairly good indication he wasn’t Tom—even if he didn’t know who else he could be, anymore.

Because there was too much there. You never really appreciated exactly how much the human mind could hold, and Tom, for a long time, had been more than a human mind. He’d eaten out countless bits of other minds over the half century of his imprisonment, and, on entering Harry’s mind, proceeded to dump all that information into his single brain.

For the fiftieth time since regaining consciousness that afternoon, he cursed his ignorant godfather for necessitating the breach of his occlumency.

A knock at the door interrupted his brooding. 

It was eleven o’clock, he thought irritably. Who, in this thrice bedamned household, would bother with him this late at night?

Not Sirius, the man seemed to have a congenital aversion to knocking and any other forms of polite behavior. And he couldn’t smell Lupin. He flared his nostrils experimentally, trying to catch the scent of the visitor—

A sudden jolt of pain through his temples stopped that.

Clutching his head, he opted for the easy way out—ignoring the person at the door and hoping they went away.

They didn’t. The next knock made his temples ring.

“Come in,” he muttered.

The door opening, admitting the headmaster. He groaned internally, not even bothering to fix an expression of pleasant interest on his face.

“Professor,” he greeted.

“Harry,” the Headmaster acknowledged, seating himself on the chair by the door. “I apologize for disturbing you so late in the evening. I had meant to check on your condition after Severus treated you, but you did not seem fit to be disturbed. I saw the light under your door and surmised you were awake. How are you?”

He ignored the question, continuing to stare at the Muggles in the alley. They were still coupling with the mindless enthusiasm of livestock.

“It seems strange that you’re here so late.”

“Harry,” the Headmaster remonstrated. 

It almost sounded pleading, and that was enough at odds with the expectations of Tom Riddle, if not Harry Potter, that he turned in interest. 

“You have always been of special concern to me,” the Headmaster said gravely. 

Oh. This again. He turned back towards the window, watching the Muggles suck face, wondering if it was as fun as their expressions seemed to suggest.

His life before Hogwarts—his synapses made the unwanted connection with a jolt of pain—had been far worse than Tom Riddle’s had ever been. At the very least though, Albus Dumbledore had seemingly learnt from his experience. After Hagrid had run into some trouble retrieving him from the group home, Snape had been recruited to bring him to the school. He’d never heard the details of what passed between his teachers, but he guessed any reaction other than disregard from Snape must have prompted Dumbledore’s attention. And after what had happened to Hermione—

Dumbledore had kept him at the school during the summer. That first summer, it was because of his health. He’d spent most of the time in St. Mungo’s, working with the Mind Healers. They’d advised he stay in an environment rich in ambient magic to speed his recovery, and Dumbledore had opened Hogwarts to him. The Headmaster normally didn’t stay there during the summers, Harry learnt—but he had that summer. Whether it was out of a lingering guilt for how his choices had affected Harry, or because of his disquieting connection to Lord Voldemort, he couldn’t guess. Harry had mostly avoided him, in favor of helping Professor Sprout tend the greenhouses, or roaming the forest with Hagrid to gather herbs. When he was welcomed back the next summer, ostensibly as a kind of work-study program with Hagrid, he didn’t question his good luck. 

“Severus told me it was your love for her that brought you back,” Dumbledore continued quietly. “It will be difficult, I expect, in the days ahead—both for you to maintain your mind against the wolf—especially after any remaining damage to your mind after what happened with Tom.”

The old man met his eyes knowingly.

Harry flinched.

He knew.

The old man reached into his pocket—to draw his wand, and Harry tensed, wondering how long it would take to leap the room and rip his withered throat loose through his beard—only to withdraw a plain, black book with gold lettering on the front.

All of him stilled.

He reached for it, involuntarily.

Dumbledore smiled, a little sadly.

“I was sorry to take this back from you before, though you understand, there is as much danger as ever for you to write in it—“

Harry didn’t care.

“—it will drain your magic, she doesn’t have any control over that. It’s part and parcel of how it keeps her conscious.”

He’d tell first years it’d help them with their homework if they wrote in it, and damn both Dumbledore and Hermione if they took issue with it. He’d give it to the Gobstones Club Secretary for her to take notes during their meetings. He would feed her his own memories if she needed them. Gods knew, he had enough of them, and she had nothing but time in which to scrutinize them—

“But I believe now, for now, the risk may be worth the benefit to you, to have your friend back.” The old man got up, and placed the black diary back in Harry’s hands, where it belonged.

“Good luck, Harry.”

He turned to leave. 

“Headmaster?”

The old man paused.

Harry drew in a breath. “Thank you.”

The old man gone, Harry leapt to the desk, rummaging through his drawers for a decent quill. She’d always loved to complain about how messy his writing was, well, let her see how he’d improved. Flipping open the book, he began.

/Hermione. You’ll never guess what’s happened.../

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please review!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please say hello on your way out :)


End file.
